The Ring of Kerry, Skellig Michael, and the Aran Islands
Getting around the western side of Ireland is a little more difficult. This is a very lightly populated area, and the roads often follows paths of least resistance that were probably cut between rocks centuries earlier. Much of it is also farmland, so the sides of the roads are covered with rock walls to keep cattle in, but also to make for a very tight drive. When driving the Ring of Kerry you have two options, start in Kenmare and drive clockwise around, or start in Killarney and drive counterclockwise. Most people recommend, and I agree, to drive the clockwise route. The tour companies have all agreed to drive their giant tour buses counterclockwise around the path, which keeps you from getting stuck behind a slow moving bus, but also means you will have to get out of the way when a large bus is coming down a narrow road right at you. My tip is to get going early. If you are out of your hotel by 7:30am like we were you can cover most of the Ring before the buses ever start rolling, and all you have to worry about is taking in the scenery.
The Ring of Kerry is around a 100 mile long stretch of highway that circles the Iveragh Peninsula, and provides for wonderful views of the ocean meeting the green hills of Ireland. Now what I am about to say may seem like blasphemy, but we weren't really that impressed with the Ring. To be certain there are some lovely sites, but I believe all of the hype I heard about it from everyone I have ever met that toured around it lifted my expectations so high reality could not ever have matched it. While we took to Ring of Kerry to get out to Skellig Michael, there are sites all throughout Ireland that are equally as stunning, in my opinion, that come with a lot less traffic. A high note on our Ring of Kerry drive is the appearance of our second punctuation mark on a street sign on our travels. Apparently you need to yell everything from that point on in your drive. From the Ring of Kerry we took the smaller Skellig Ring to make it to our next stop, Skellig Michael. Skellig Michael is an island monastery that was first inhabited in the 6th Century by monks hoping to remove themselves from the go-go-go lifestyle of Dark Ages Ireland. To get to Skellig Michael you must go to the small port town of Portmagee. From there you will take about an hour long ferry ride out to the island. The ferry ride is the opposite of cheap. At €70 per person, cash only, you are paying a big cost to get out there. Once you are there you are given a brief run down of how to act on the island, then you are turned loose to hike the more than 600 stairs to the top laid by monks more than a thousand years ago. At more than 40 floors tall, it is quite a hike, and can be very nerve racking if you like hand rails, which there are not. At the top you will find a park ranger who will explain what life was like for the monks who lived there in the beehive inspired huts. Covering the island are wild birds, especially the very cute Puffin bird which looks like a comic book character more than a living animal. Skellig Michael has gained fame in the last year because it is the used as the home of Luke Skywalker in the newest Star Wars movie, and according to the concierge at our hotel will play a much bigger part in the second movie. On the way back from the island you will circle around what is called Little Skellig, which has become a wildlife preserve for wild birds. More than 50,000 birds live on this small island to breed and stay safe from hunters. If you are afraid of having a bird poop on you, you better sit this one out. Visiting Skellig Michael is a must, and while expensive is worth every dime. There is something to know, they limit visitors to the island to around 50 a day, so you need to book months in advance to make sure you have a spot on the ferry out that day. There were people in Portmagee who told us they had been waiting in town for three days hoping someone wouldn't show up for the ferry so they could get their spot out to it.
We continued up the western coast of Ireland to a small town called Dingle. I had hoped to hike the obviously self-named Mount Brandon, from which St. Brendan (I don't know why the spelling changes) supposedly decided to sail west more than a thousand years ago. Brendan is rumored to have been the first person to find the New World, but we will save that for another debate. The next morning we found ourselves in the worst rain of the trip, a true downpour, and had to skip the hike. Our trip north to our destination for the night took us through the terrifying Connor Pass, a single lane road running down the side of a mountain made even more terrifying because it was completely blanketed with fog and we could only see for 20-30 feet in front of us. This picture is the one and only time I will ever post a photo from someone else, but with the fog it was far to terrifying to take pictures as we drove. Thankfully we survived, and were laughed at by locals later who said they won't even drive that, they instead go an hour out of their way to take the long way around.
After settling down in the very artsy town of Galway for the night, the next day we set sail for the Gaelic stronghold of the Aran Islands. A small chain of islands of the coast, you reach them much like Skellig Michael by ferry. The largest of the islands, Inishmore, has about 800 locals living on the island, all of whom still speak the Gaelic tongue as their first language. Once we arrived on the island we picked up one of the minibus tours around the island run by a local. At €10 per person, it was a good deal to get you around for most of the day. Our guide spoke fluent English, was very entertaining, and took us to areas we would have had a hard time getting too if we had decided to bike around the island like many visitors. The must see on the island is the stone fortress of Dun Aengus. Built before the time of Christ, the fort sits on a cliff more than 300 feet high looking over the Atlantic Ocean. It is impossible to describe the sheer face of this cliff. I can't imagine what people needed defend against two thousand years ago, but they had the best vantage point on the island to do it. From there we headed to the farthest western point on the island. Much of western Ireland is made up of solid limestone that has been weathered over thousands of years to look like a set from Star Wars. The western half of Inishmore is so rocky it is hard to believe someone in the 21st Century could live there, let alone centuries ago. Back in the town, we set down for a lunch a a local restaurant and listened to two men speak Gaelic to one another telling jokes for an hour. Just a note, they prefer you call it Irish since Gaelic actually derives from the term Gaul, which the Roman Empire used to describe their territory in Western Europe. After listening to these guys we got up to leave, and they both shouted in perfect English, "We hope you enjoyed our island." There are two choices for the ferry back to the mainland, 4:30pm and 6:00pm. We selected the late ferry, and had a chance to see the island with about a thousand less people on it. While many of the shops are closed once the larger ferry leaves, you can sit down and have a drink and talk to some locals like we did.
Again we had another set of action packed days. We were lucky the only two days we needed there to be a break in the rain long enough for us to sail out to some islands we got it. If I had to do any of them again it would definitely be Skellig Michael. I have never met another person I know that has been there, and the site itself is just stunning. The rest of them are fun trips and are great experiences. The next day from Galway we drove the three short hours back to Dublin to take on Ireland's biggest city. Along the drive you can stop at some interesting sites like the Hill of Tara, former seat of power for the High King of Ireland, and Newgrange, a Neolithic monument for pagan religions that is more than five thousand years old. A word of advice on Newgrange, book a ticket in advance. They sell out daily, and you would hate to drive all the way there just to not get in.
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